Hazelnut Milk

Flavour of the century: Noisette, noisette, noisette. Always noisette.

It is the bane of my weekly shop having to trek across town to a well known supermarket just to buy hazelnut milk. As such when ‘Homemade with Love – Jennifer Perillo‘ arrived in my life (and completely changed it, yes I feel that strongly) with a recipe for homemade cashew milk and various nut butters I was just in equally amounts awe and nirvana. I assumed nut milks were nut milks and that simply switching cashews for hazelnuts would do the trick, and thankfully it does. Armed with the most abominably cute milk bottles I set to work.

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Courgette and Hazelnut Breakfast Muffins

Fact of the day: Vegetable cakes are just so totally in. Get with it.

Exciting thing I did for the first time today: Saved my veg peelings and cut offs from the last few days, some chicken bones from last night’s dinner and made my own stock. I just put it all in a large pan with a chunk of Parmesan rind and tablespoon of salt and let it boil for an hour. It is pretty yum and ready for the week ahead.

Cook book that this recipe is from: (surprise surprise) ‘Homemade with Love – Jennifer Perillo‘ I am obsessed with this book at the moment.

There are a plethora of vegetable cake recipes around; carrot, courgette, parsnip, potato, sweet potato, beetroot, you name it and I’m sure there will be a cake recipe somewhere. I decided to jump on the bandwagon and make a batch of breakfast muffins ready for when I got back from the ritual Sunday family dog walk. They went down a treat and whilst they might not win a beauty competition, they’d never stand you up or burn the dinner. Beauty is on the inside and it is the same for these muffins.

Banana Bread Pancakes with Nutella and Strawberries

Flavour of the moment: Banana, fear not I will not go on my rant about ripe bananas again but here is another way for using up those delicious golden gifts.

This recipe is a tradition of James and I’s whenever we used to travel to see each other. Now that he’s living here we had the luxury of having them ‘just because’ and for old times sake. I quite literally spent the whole week counting down to Banana-Pancake-Day a.k.a Saturday and they didn’t disappoint. The original recipe I found was on Pinterest but as with all the best loved recipes it has been adapted over time. I think these are best topped with a generous portion of Nutella and some strawberries.

Choco-Hazelnut Overnight Oats

Flavour of the day: Pomegranate. I made tahini, lemon and pomegranate pasta for dinner becauseI found lemon stripey pasta bows in the supermarket, it was a great moment, and couldn’t wait to try it. I loved how sweet and crunchy the pomegranate was in this dish, a great contrast to the creamy sauce and punchy coriander.

There are very few things in life that I love more than Nutella, if could eat a jar a day with a spoon (preferably for breakfast) and not get fat then I most definitely would. I will begin this practice once I get married and he is trapped. I have however invented something that does the job and fulfills that Nutella need every morning (well I don’t have it EVERY morning but most of them). These oats literally get me out of bed, given that I have to be up at 6am that is no mean feat. They also come in at about 350 calories, fabulous and filling!

Sweet Potato Pizza Crust

Flavour of the week: Beetroot & hazelnut brownie with vanilla and hazelnut ice cream. Is that a flavour, it should be because my week has consisted of a lot of that. And lasagne. It has been a week of comfort food for sure.

Cook book of the moment: Ice cream made easy. The quick vanilla recipe in this book is my go to ice cream recipe and I just replace the flavouring if needs be, usually with hazelnut. The Andrew James Ice Cream Maker is my weapon of choice (but make sure the bowl has been in the freezer AT LEAST overnight). Incidentally the book comes free with it; go on, it’d be rude not to at under £20. In fact I currently have a batch of vanilla ice cream churning as we speak to accompany the Valentine’s dessert I’m making. Unfortunately the dessert is a surprise so I can’t tell you what it is yet. It is a fantastic recipe passed onto me by a friend, which I will share eventually.

Last weekend I was craving pizza but given the unholy quantity of garlic baguettes I consumed on the Saturday, a traditional pizza really was out of the question. I have tried in the past to make a cauliflower crust pizza as a healthy pizza alternative but it didn’t go particularly successfully and it did taste of cauliflower (unsurprisingly). I decided to give sweet potato pizza crust a chance and I am so pleased that I did!